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JD's Speech

This is my first time in Hamilton and I'm so pleased to be here to celebrate Earth Week with all of you. This is a very special event for me because my health and the health of my friends has been affected by the environment.

My personal battle for a cleaner environment comes as a surprise even to me...it began on January 7, 1994.

I was watching the Simpson's on TV when I felt a very strange lump of the right side of my neck. It felt so weird that I told my parents. The next thing I remember, I was put in a children's hospital ward for two weeks undergoing all these tests.

I was tired and scared and I worried a lot. I was ten years old at the time, when the doctor told me that I had cancer. I cried, my parents cried and so did my sister.

Before the doctor told me that I had cancer, I had seen a television movie about a young girl who had cancer and just like the girl in the movie I worried that I would die. I thought about this movie and I recalled that this girl had lost all of her hair, so I was really scared that I would lose my hair.

The doctors quickly began my medical treatment to get rid of my cancer - it is called chemotherapy. Sure enough, I lost all of my hair - I looked like an old guy with a bald head and that's why I always wore a baseball cap.

During my stay in the hospital, I felt so lonely lying in bed. I missed not going to school and hanging out with my friends. It seemed so strange for me to be always hooked up to a machine. But it also gave me time to think. I wondered, how did I get cancer.

I would discover that I wasn't the only kid in my home town of Ile-Bizard to be in the same hospital as me. I should let you know that in my town of Ile- Bizard there are lots of golf courses. Most of the homes are around the golf courses. A lot of people love to have fun and play golf in my town and that is not a problem.

The problem with golf courses is that they spray the grass with pesticides - pesticides are poisonous chemicals that destroy all the dandelions on the golf courses.

I began to wonder, if chemicals can destroy dandelions what else can they destroy?

While in the hospital, I started to recall that I was always sick even as a little kid. One time, I even remember being taken to the hospital in an ambulence because my nose would not stop bleeding. I kept returning back to the same hospital over and over again for the same symptoms. The doctors were never able to figure out what was wrong with me.

It was only when I developed a rash after playing on our lawn which had been treated with pesticides - those poisonous chemicals that my parents were told by a doctor to stop using pesticides.

So I began to wonder if my cancer was caused by pesticides. I found a brightly coloured pamphlet with a picture of a little kid and a dog playing in the park. It was an easy pamphlet to read and that's when I found out by reading the pamphlet that my cancer was linked to exposure to pesticides. Pesticides not only destroy dandelions and bugs but it can also hurt people especially little kids. This worried me because if I was sick with cancer that also meant that other little kids could become sick with cancer.

I asked my parents to take me to city hall so I could show the mayor this pamphlet. I asked him if he would tell the people in our city to stop using pesticides because even though it destroys dandelions it makes little kids like me sick. The mayor ignored me.

Sometimes, it's tough to be a kid because the adults don't take you seriously. So together with my friends, I organized a demonstration in front of city hall. We had colourful balloons and we wanted people to stop using pesticides to spray the golf courses and their lawns.

After that, I would go to city hall once a month and ask the mayor to make a law against pesticides use because pesticides can make people sick with cancer. And every time the mayor would tell me that there is no proof that pesticides can cause cancer.

I knew that there were a lot of kids like me in Ile-Bizard because I counted 22 kids with cancer who lived in my city...and all of them had been exposed to pesticides. That's a lot of kids from one little city in a hospital ward.

I'm one of the lucky kids who survived but that was a close call. Once I was so sick and I remember listening to the doctor telling my parents that I would probably die. He was wrong.

For the first time in my life, I fought to stay alive. Unfortunately, most of my friends in the hospital didn't survive. I will always remember my friend Marie-Eve and what she told me before she died. She said: "Jean Dominique, you must stay alive, for me it's time to go, but you have a lot of work to do."

For eight years, I have been asking politicians to make a new law that would stop people from using pesticides on the grass. Every time, people spray pesticides in my neighbourhood, my body reacts with asthma, allergies and I still get nose bleeds.

I believe that I'm not the only kid to get sick from pesticides and that is why I want to stop people from using pesticides on their grass.

I remember speaking in front of a grade six class and a student asked me how long had I been away from school because of my cancer. I told him that I had missed two and a half years of school and he said to me "lucky you." I said to him, "I'd rather go to school that be sick with cancer."

My dream is for doctors to tell people about the dangers of using pesticides on grass. As I speak to you today, part of my dream has come true. Finally my home town of Ile Bizard has passed a new law not allowing people to use pesticides and I know that there are other cities and towns across Canada which also want to make such a law including your city of Hamilton.

When I first went to my city hall to ask the mayor to make a new law against the use of pesticides... I never realized that it would take such a long time.

When I was ten years old, I never dreamed that I would be on television and radio asking to have a cleaner environment….but that is what happened.

I never dreamed that I would talk to so many politicians and tell them that pesticides pollute the environment and may hurt the health of little kids.

I guess I was not sick for nothing. I was not happy that I had cancer but my illness taught me to fight...just like a soldier.

This also goes to show that even a little kid can make a difference. And like me, all of you in this room can make a difference in protecting the environment.

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